"The reason we are calling you is to invite you to Blizzcon, all expenses paid, and we would love to take you out for drinks."

By
Hope Corrigan

Blizzard has showered a fan in rewards after the return of a lost gold master source code disc for the original 1998 StarCraft.

As spotted by Kotaku, Reddit user Khemist49 had purchased a "Box of Blizzard stuff" off eBay which happened to contain a disc marked "StarCraft Gold Master Source Code". Unsure what to do with the seemingly valuable object, he turned to Reddit for answers and, after having some users request the code be made freely available or to sell it, was contacted by Blizzard's legal team.

Blizzard naturally requested that he return the disc due to the "intellectual property and trade secrets" that it contained and once again Khemist49 turned to Reddit to express his confusion after seeking legal advice. Torn between having paid for and done nothing wrong in acquiring the disc and his potential legal obligations, he decided to send the disc back to Blizzard, just in case.

The multi-billion dollar game company decided to reward Khemist49 by sending him a free copy of its popular FPS Overwatch, and $250 USD in Blizzard store credit.

Khemist49 assumed that this was the end of this unusual event - until a week later he received a phone call from a Blizzard employee.

"He wanted to thank me for returning their disc (which was in fact stolen)." Khemist49 explains in his follow up Reddit post "He then asked me if i have ever heard of BlizzCon. I said well, yeah of course but it's impossible for me to go, i live in the east coast, and the badges are always sold out before you can refresh the page lol. He said well, the reason we are calling you is to invite you to Blizzcon, all expenses paid, and we would love to take you out for drinks."

To top it all off, two days later he also received a box of Diablo and Overwatch themed merchandise for his troubles.

Blizzard has confirmed the events and stated that it "wanted to show an appropriate level of appreciation to the player for doing the right thing, not just from Blizzard, but on behalf of the large and active community of players who still enjoy StarCraft today".

The recovery of the StarCraft source code comes at an interesting time for Blizzard, with the original StarCraft and its expansion not only made free to download last month but also being remastered later this year.

Hope Corrigan is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can find her on the internet.